Mumford, Garland heading to NCAA Division III Championships

Although the regular season ended, senior Shai Mumford and sophomore Tyler Garland are heading into overtime.

The men’s indoor track and field duo have qualified for the NCAA Division III Championships this weekend in Boston, Massachusetts.

Mumford has qualified with the 15th best time in the 200 meters and Garland has registered as 20th in the 60 hurdles.

“We’re excited about that,” head coach Dustin Dimit said. “They worked hard all year and definitely their hard work paid off. We thought that was a good possibility and they performed when they needed to make sure they get to run another week here.”

Mumford placed 16th in the 200 meters last year at the event and was nothing but thankful to have the opportunity to head back.

“I feel as though it’s a blessing in disguise,” Mumford said. “I worked hard day in, day out for it. I feel as though it’s a great opportunity to perform at the highest level with other athletes in the nation.”

The announcement is bittersweet, as others on the team were unable to qualify for the championships.

“We expect that in the indoor season,” Dimit said. “We always have a lot more people qualify for outdoors. We finished the indoor season pretty strong for the majority of the guys, winning the regional title. We weren’t supposed to do that, we’re kind of an underdog. So the fact that they all came together to win that, we were pretty excited to end the [indoor] season on a good note for the rest of this team.”

“It’s always going to be a challenge,” Mumford said. “We have outdoor to focus on too so it’s another opportunity for us to have more athletes on our team compete at the national championships. It’s going to take time and we have to be patient.”

Mumford expressed that his goal for the season was to stress that both team wins and personal accolades are equally important. He stated that he still wanted to win individually, but also wanted to win as a team.

Dimit feels like his team will be “on the hunt for the team title” during the outdoor season.

As for the championships happening this weekend, both Dimit and Mumford laid out the groundwork as to what they are doing to prepare for such a huge event.

“We’ve already set up our training so they peak at this time and they’re running their fastest,” Dimit said. “We saw that at the regional championships, where Tyler won and Shai ran his fastest time of the year. We’re just kind of finishing through that whole training plan that we have and we’re expecting big things from this weekend.”

“I’m just getting mentally prepared, making sure all my muscles are good to go and I’m warming up well,” Mumford said.

For comments/questions about this story, email sports@thewhitonline.com or tweet @TheWhitOnline.